


The Wall

by symbolcrash



Category: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Genre: Exposition, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-02-27
Updated: 2010-03-22
Packaged: 2017-11-14 05:38:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/511901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/symbolcrash/pseuds/symbolcrash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following Billy Campbell through school, life, and obsessions. You never know when an event will be pivotal, and you never know if you're going to remember it whether it was or not. It takes many bricks to build a wall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In the Flesh.

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea how long this is going to be, but I know it will be in 26 parts. Some parts will be posted together to preserve continuity, but others will stand alone. The overall summary and subsequent analysis of each part should be paired with the corresponding song in Pink Floyd's _The Wall_.

Recess was over. The bell to end it rang a full minute prior, and now the last stragglers of the playground filtered in slowly - light through a dirty window, ushered in by paraprofessionals with too-large hands. It was soon enough after that the swings on the A-set were still twisting meekly at the bottom, but despite the urgency of the bell, two boys remained just beyond the peak of a little grass hill on the other side, playing with action figures.  
  
"I want to be Dr. Horrible," said Jason March, picking up the small plastic doctor and twisting his arm into a menacing claw.   
  
Shawn Cooley frowned, his shoulders slumping beneath his windbreaker. "You always pick him first. I want to try."  
  
Jason lifted his face in the air, looking down at his friend from the bridge of his nose. "You don't have what it  _takes_  to be evil. I  _do_. I'm making a ray gun at my house that can blow up the  _whole school_." The last part was spoken in a very conspiratorial whisper. Shawn didn't have to know that the ray gun consisted of a paper towel tube and the corpse of a super soaker from last summer.  
  
Appropriately, Shawn was taken aback. "Really?" He thought about it for a moment. "But won't you get in trouble?"  
  
Jason faltered. "Well, you can't tell anyone until it's ready. If you tell on me  _before_  it's ready, then I'll get a referral and Stinky Sullivan will beat  _both_  of us up." He didn't know if that last part were true, but he figured that Shawn was scared enough of Stinky to avoid taking any chances.   
  
Shawn looked contemplative, then stretched his arms around his knees and clasped them in front. If someone were to come up behind him and push him over, he would probably roll cleanly down the hill until he reached the bottom, just like a little potato bug. Finally, he picked up the figure of Captain Hammer, turning him over in his hands. "I can't wait until a new superhero shows up. It's kinda lame to play with one that isn't really around any more."  
  
" _You're_  lame," retorted Jason, but then he frowned. "I wonder if he's bored."  
  
"Who?"  
  
"Dr. Horrible."  
  
"I don't think so," Shawn shrugged. He started to dig a trench, one in which his retired hero could lie in wait for the villain who stole his dignity. "I don't think you're allowed to get bored in the Evil League of Evil. I think if you start to get bored, they think you're being lazy, and then they kill you."  
  
"Like strangle-kill? Or do they send someone up to snipe them?"  
  
"Maybe they make you kill  _yourself_." Shawn's eyes were wide. He wiped his hands on his jeans and leaned forward, trying to make his cherubic face as menacing as possible.  
  
Jason twisted his own face into a disbelieving grimace, then moved Dr. Horrible forward and placed the infamous Death Ray in his hands. "I think the Evil League of Evil has snipers that they hire to pick people off that try to stop them. It makes more sense. Like in Modern Warfare 2, if you've got men on the ground, you have to send out snipers to make sure that they don't get shot."  
  
Grinning, Shawn nodded. "Do you think they all have Interventions?"  
  
"Of  _course_  they have Interventions. It would be lame if they had something like a Barrett .50 cal, because then you couldn't get one-hit kills."  
  
"Oh yeah," Shawn said. "It'd be messy with the Barrett."  
  
Neither of them noticed, amidst the blissful cloud of video games and superheroes they'd kicked up around themselves, that a shadow was fast-approaching on their hiding spot. The grass seemed to wither in the dark length's advance, and by the time the two boys were finally aware of the presence, it was too late.   
  
"Boys," said the parapro, "recess is over."  
  
Jacob and Shawn glanced up slowly, the shame of being caught creeping up their faces and turning down their lips. "Uh-oh."  
  
"Time to get inside."  
  
They scrambled to their feet, the threat of detention looming high above them, a pink slip of paper curling formidably as it followed them inside. Meanwhile, Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer lay abandoned on the playground, the former face first in the hard earth, propped up by the Death Ray - the latter still crouched in the trench, waiting to strike, the battle forever stagnated by the authority of a bell.  
  
When the shadow receded, the dirt and grass were left alone to twist around the figures, mocking the human concept of time.  
  
Even so, the bell would ring again.


	2. The Thin Ice.

Billy Campbell drummed his fingers on his desk, watching his classmates file out of Mrs. Heavner's fifth grade room. He didn't understand why he had to stay inside while everyone else got to have recess; it didn't seem fair. They wouldn't even tell him, only that in a few minutes, he was going to have to see the school counsellor. This, of course, made  _no_  sense whatsoever. He hadn't done anything wrong - he _never_  did anything wrong, come to think of it - and since they couldn't be bothered to tell him, he'd had to make up a number of different scenarios in his head. The first one was unlikely. No one had ever received an award for being the best cafeteria helper, although if there were an award for that, he'd probably be the only one to get it. The lunch staff  _adored_  Billy, and it wouldn't be far off to say that he liked them a lot, too, if only for the fact that they made him feel good about himself.  _Oh, Billy, you're such a good helper. Did you wash those dishes already, Billy? My, my, what a wonderful boy._  
  
The second scenario was a little more plausible, although it unnerved him to even consider it as a possibility. Brian Sanchez, the class troublemaker, might have done something bad and then told everyone that it was Billy who did it. This had never happened before, of course. Brian was a pain, but he could never straight-on  _lie_  to a teacher. He was a terrible liar. Billy remembered the day he was skipped into the fifth grade - he'd had the audacity to smugly approach Brian and bring up the fact that since he was in the same grade, Brian couldn't beat him up any more.  
  
Brian's answer was to walk by him, then kick him in the back of the knees until he fell down and cried.  
  
However, when the teacher asked Brian about that particular incident, the kid stumbled and sniffled so much that Billy didn't know if he was saying actual words. In the end, Brian had received a detention, and Billy got a warning for provocation.  
  
He was so angry at Brian for that. He could've had  _six gold stars_. Now, he only had five.  
  
The scenarios were taking up so much of Billy's capacity for observation that he completely missed Mrs Heavner walking beside him, so when she tapped him on the shoulder to rouse him from his daydreams, Billy nearly jumped out of his skin. "Huh?"  
  
"You need to go to the counsellor's office, now." Mrs Heavner smiled at him, which was Billy's immediate clue to expect something terrible. "Your mother is already here."  
  
Billy's eyes became as huge as saucers. "My  _mother?_ " he squeaked.  
  
Mrs Heavner smiled again, though this one contained a hint of sadness. "You know, it's really been nice to have you here as a student. I can't emphasise enough how wonderful it's been to teach you what I can."  
  
Desperately searching his teacher's expression, Billy found nothing but solemnity behind all the forced smiles. His heartbeat quickened, and he opened and closed his mouth before actually attempting to say anything of merit. "What - what's going on?"  
  
"It isn't my place to say," said Mrs Heavner, "but you should probably go. They're expecting you."  
  
Numbly, Billy left his books on the desk and - if one were judging by his demeanour - marched toward his doom.  
  
  


***

  
  
  
"Sixth  _grade?_ " Billy said, astonished. " _Middle school?_ " He looked at his mother, who was beaming down at him with all the pride a mother could possibly possess. His face twisted into a deep frown. "What did I ever do to  _you?_ "  
  
Sarah Campbell retracted her glowing expression and replaced it with one of confusion. "I don't understand. This is a wonderful opportunity for you, sweetie."  
  
"Do you know what they  _do_  to you in middle school?" Billy whined. Then, he tried a different approach. "Be - besides, all my friends are here!"  
  
Sarah started to move her lips, but wisely decided against it. In her face, though - the way she quirked her mouth, and the way her eyes frowned even when the rest of her remained neutral - was her argument against Billy's, and the young genius didn't need his IQ to pick it out.   
  
 _You don't have any friends, Billy._  
  
Sarah petitioned the counsellor with a soundless plea. Taking the hint, the counsellor stepped forward and crouched down on one knee, now face to face with Billy, who was stiffly seated in a chair. "Mrs Heavner was concerned that you weren't being challenged with the material she was giving you. We're trying to give you a chance to do things beyond your grade level without asking for it, first."  
  
Billy shifted uncomfortably, like the chair had suddenly turned into a bed of nails and his sweaty, clammy hands, gripping the edges of the seat, were being mercilessly stabbed. "I like asking for things," he retorted weakly. He looked at his mother, and in his fear found this ally to be a temporary enemy, and presented her with what he took to be a glare, but within the environment, it softened to a quick squint. "I'm challenged enough."  
  
"Your test scores say otherwise," said the counsellor, his voice attempting to find the right level of calm and reassuring. It wasn't working. "I've been talking with Mrs Heavner -"  
  
"Mrs  _Heavner's_  in on this?" Billy felt betrayed.  
  
"- she simply says that you don't really look like you listen in class, but she wouldn't scold you because you aren't being disruptive. You need an opportunity to learn what you're  _taught_ , not what you have to pick up yourself because the rest of the school is so far behind you."  
  
Billy sat on his little bed of nails, imagining that the tiny, sharp points were digging into his palms until they bled. He didn't even know why they brought him here; they were obviously planning on turning his world upside down again without even so much as  _considering_  his opinions on the matter. The truth was, he'd  _just_  gotten used to the fifth grade. He'd managed to build his way up to speaking during group activities, and he was even making headway on his grown-up fifth-grader crush, Marianne Burton. Just the other day, he'd pointed out a mistake on her reading homework right before she turned it in, and she'd  _thanked him_  for it. If he was going to go to middle school, it would be when Marianne Burton went to middle school, that way they could inevitably go to the Spring Tolo together because  _who else_  could she  _possibly_  ask besides him? He  _saved her life!_  
  
"I - " Billy began, but his tongue was warring with his brain again, and he had to wait until they both calmed down before he could properly speak.  _I don't want to. I don't want to._  "Okay," he said, somehow without opening his mouth - did he open his mouth? He couldn't tell - it was right before he felt like he was popped by one of the nails, making him deflate, undignified, against the chair.   
  
The counsellor smiled, and then he and his mother exchanged a look of mild triumph while Billy slumped over in the chair, suddenly feeling like he was about to throw up. His skin became cold and sweaty at the same time, and the muscles on the back of his neck began to twitch involuntarily. The room felt warped somehow. It was the same, but bigger, and all the edges were sharper than they were before, and if he touched them, he was going to cut his own hand off and bleed all over the floor, and the counsellor would be  _so_  mad at him -  
  
"Mom?" Billy whimpered, interrupting a conversation he hadn't heard. He touched her arm. "Mom?"  
  
Sarah turned, concern rippling across her features. "What's wrong, Billy?"  
  
Billy tilted his head, and for a moment, he couldn't remember why he was calling her. "Nothing," he said quietly.  
  
And promptly passed out.


	3. Exposition Two. Another brick in the wall (1).

Billy was tired in so many ways.  
  
He stepped over the crack in the floor at the back door, his backpack hanging limply off his shoulder and tugging a little bit of his dirty t-shirt with it. He didn't bother fixing it. It exposed just enough of his prominent collarbone to make him look like a waif, which was just fine with him. Upper-middle class schoolboys didn't care about the methods of their heroes so long as they won, and Billy knew that he cared. If he didn't care, why would he feel so trampled, like he could physically  _sense_  when his childhood naivete was ripped out of his soul?  
  
Letting his backpack fall to the floor in a heap, he moved over to the refrigerator on autopilot; the light was on and he could feel the cold air flowing out into the kitchen, chilling his sensitive skin. It was nice. He'd been in the house for two full minutes and already he was starting to feel like he was suffocating.   
  
"Billy, close the refrigerator if you aren't going to take anything," Sarah scolded him mildly, coming up from behind him to push the door closed for emphasis. Then, she flung a hand to her lips. "Oh my God, _Billy!_ " She crouched down beside him, her fingers already working to part his unruly bangs. "What happened to your eye?"  
  
For a second, Billy couldn't remember anything that she could possibly be referring to, and then when her thumb grazed the top of the bruise, he remembered all too well. "Ow!" He flinched away from her, sucking in his breath with a low hiss. "Stop, okay? Please? It's no big deal." Then, he thought of something. "You heard about what happened today, right?"   
  
Sarah was already in the refrigerator, pulling out a package of steaks that were being defrosted for dinner. "If it's about what happened to your eye, which is the only thing I'm interested in at the moment, then no." She cut a piece of steak off the bone with a carving knife, then brought the dripping meat over to Billy and pressed it to his face without so much as a warning.  
  
"Nguh," shuddered Billy, and he squinted, pushing her hand aside so he could hold the steak against his own eye. "No, I mean about Justice Joe and Mister Maniacal. I can't believe you didn't hear about it; it was  _everywhere_  - "  
  
"I don't want to talk about superheroes and supervillains, Billy," Sarah sighed. "I want to know what happened."  
  
Grumbling, Billy sat at the kitchen table, his chin resting in his palm. "It's dumb, it'll heal. Did you know that Justice Joe was  _weakened?_  And then - well, I didn't see the whole thing because the police cleared us out, but I heard that Mister Maniacal beat him to death with a  _pipe_  -"  
  
" _Billy!_ " Sarah pulled out a chair and sat beside him. She looked troubled. "I don't want you talking about that any more. When people die, it isn't sensational - "  
  
"I didn't say it was sensational," Billy interjected.  
  
" -  _or_  worth talking about so crassly." She pursed her lips together. "Justice Joe was your  _hero_ , Billy; do you think he would appreciate his death being spoken of like this? By you?"  
  
Soft blue eyes peeked up at Sarah through a curtain of blond hair; the gaze they held bore a strange mixture of defiance and sadness, and it was only imparted in a glimpse before Billy lowered his head and stared hard at the floor beyond the tabletop. He pushed the meat unceremoniously against his face. "No." His voice was barely a mumble.  
  
"Good - that's good," Sarah allowed herself to breathe, pressing her fingers to the bridge of her nose. "And you aren't going to tell me about what happened to your eye."  
  
Billy squirmed in the chair, steak blood running down his arm in tiny, diluted rivulets. "Are you going to make me?" He frowned.  
  
A sigh. "No. I won't make you."  
  
"It's not a big  _deal_ ," Billy emphasised, then got up from the chair and went to retrieve his backpack from the doorway, where it had fallen. "Anyway, I have homework." He paused, his brow furrowing. He  _knew_ something didn't seem right. "Where's Dad? I thought he came home from Tokyo today."  
  
Sarah pressed her lips together in a thin line. "Your father went out for a while. He'll be back by supper, I'm sure."  
  
Billy frowned. "But we made a deal." His lower lip poked out a little, his eyes permanently narrowed into a squint behind the steak, which took up almost half his face. "He said that when he got back, he'd play chess with me if I went and played catch with him. We  _totally had plans_ , Mom." The steak looked away, scoffing. "Where'd he go this time? Africa?"  
  
"Young man," said Sarah, the dutiful Mom-growl creeping into her voice, "I don't know what's gotten into you today, but it needs to stop right here. Your father should be back before supper. He just went to - " here, a careful pause was placed, enough to both cultivate the right words and, conversely, internalise the wrong questions - "help a friend take care of something." She folded her arms across her chest tight enough to look like she was hugging herself - or attempting to shield herself from the elements. Billy tilted his head, unspoken curiosity flashing like a beacon in his gaze. It was deflected. His mother turned away, beginning to busy herself with chopping up the rest of the steak.  
  
"You know," Billy said at last, his chin jutting forward, "raw steak doesn't have any medicinal value." He shifted the strap on his backpack. "In fact, my eye's probably going to get infected now."  
  
Sarah paused at his words, her shoulders sinking from behind. "You're grieving. I'm going to let that slide." The chopping sound became a little more deliberate. "Please go clean yourself up; you're a mess."  
  
Cocking his head a little, he threw away the steak piece and watched his mother prepare for supper. His mind was never fully quiet, but now it was screaming, thoughts on one thing smashing into the synapses carrying messages about something  _completely_  different, his brain an electrical storm with a ravaging wind. Finally, he turned himself around, his shoes making dull  _thunks_  on the hardwood floor with every step forward he made himself take. "Grieving," he muttered, shoving his hands in his pockets. "For Justice Joe."   
  
Billy stopped for a moment on the bottom step, looking vaguely askance toward the kitchen. "Heh. Right."  
  
  


***

  
  
  
Billy was a good boy who  _never_  got in trouble. He sat in bed with his shoes off, his homework finished and his notes for the next day already drawn up and organised. Even so, he couldn't help it when his mind wandered to less acceptable things, like the look on Mister Maniacal's face when he shot Justice Joe with the weakening ray. He couldn't help picking it apart, wondering if there was more than just  _being evil_  that drew him to killing the hero.   
  
Pulling a piece of paper from his notebook, Billy began a T-chart that would hopefully answer all of his questions for him:  
  


Good | Evil  
---|---  
fame  
money  
people love you  
stupid | fame  
money  
people hate you  
smart  
  
  
  
  
It was almost too little to consider. There'd been a time in his past where he would've given anything to be called "normal." His intelligence, while touted by his mother as nothing but a ladder that would enable him to reach the highest stars, had for so long been nothing but a burden to him. Even his father, who he had presence of mind and loyalty enough to look  _up_  to, had shaken his head in disappointment when Billy announced that he was going to do Math Club after school instead of football. If that wasn't a blow to the "ladder" theory, he didn't know what was.  
  
Just thinking about it made him bitter. Justice Joe, as his hero, should've encouraged him through actions. He should've been there in spirit whenever Billy was feeling depressed about being beat up for the only thing that had ever set him apart: his intelligence.  
  
 _But no._  Billy brought his knees close to his chest, only glaring at the wall through one eye as the other had swollen shut.  _Justice Joe probably would've made fun of me, too._  
  
He set aside the paper, apathetically picking up his remote and turning on the television. Flipping past the cartoons, he finally settled on the news, hoping to catch any late developments on the story in which he'd unintentionally played a part. His heart seemed to jump up into his throat when Mister Maniacal's terrifying smirk was the first thing to be thrown up onto the screen. Billy leaned forward.   
  
 _" - and the city of Los Angeles is revolting against him for the murder of our hero. Mister Maniacal was last seen fleeing into Griffith Park, pursued by an angry mob of about thirty troubled citizens."  
  
"Think they're going to catch him, Kurt?"  
  
"I don't know, Diane, but from the way the police are making no effort to curb the riots, it's pretty clear that the whole world wants to see Mister Maniacal die."_  
  
"No," Billy murmured, his mouth forming a small "o" of surprise. He turned up the volume.  
  
 _"Seems to me they're getting pretty close. I thought I saw a couple of them with gasoline! Wonder what they're gonna do with that!"  
  
"I don't wonder, but whatever it is, that evil brainiac deserves it!"_  
  
Billy leapt up from the bed, nearly pitching forward into the wall by stumbling over his own shoes. His lips kept making the word "no" over and over, and he pulled on his sneakers so quickly that he felt a tiny hole on his left sock rip until his entire big toe was sticking through it. "I have to get down there," he breathed, throwing on his jacket. "I have to tell them that they can't kill him - "  
  
 _" - it looks like the crowd has caught up to and suppressed Mister Maniacal, and - what's that? What's happening?"  
  
"It appears that they've set him on fire!"  
  
"If you listen closely to our on-site microphone, you can hear him screaming. That's the way to do it! The people get their vengeance at last!"   
  
"I think we've learned an important lesson today, Diane."  
  
"What, that even during the darkest of times, justice will always prevail?"  
  
"Well, that, and villains are flammable!"_  
  
Billy stood, his eyes on the television without really watching, the morbid laughter of the news anchors ringing in his ears. His fingers curled up toward his palms, hands balling into fists; he clutched them so tightly that he thought he might squeeze the feeling out of his thumbs. The television faded to a dull murmur outside his field of perception, and he found himself glowering. "They killed him," he muttered, finally allowing his hands to relax and fall limply at his sides. He couldn't believe that the common perception of justice was just to  _kill_  someone that was bothering them, someone who probably only bothered them because they bothered him first. He couldn't see anyone becoming evil without a reason, and from what he saw in person and on the news, he found no reason why Mister Maniacal  _shouldn't_  have done what he did.  
  
It was  _infuriating._  
  
His body still warm from the excitement, Billy took off his jacket and draped it over the bed frame. Slowly, methodically, he began to put his books back into his backpack, making sure the paper stayed out on his bed until he could find a better place to put it - somewhere, hopefully, where he could look at it every day to remind him exactly of what people thought of smart kids like him, and later, what they would grow up to be.  
  
Folding the paper in half, Billy watched the creases, allowing a daydream to filter in through the clutter of his mind. He envisioned himself on top of the roof of Club Squish, a ray gun in his hand, pointing it at stupid, red-headed Pete.  _This is what you get, Petey. This is why you don't punch smart kids. And you people down there, don't even think about setting me on fire. I'm wearing a flame-retardant lab coat, and if you try to set me on fire, I'll just shoot you -_  
  
 _Click._  Billy jolted out of his daydream, climbing down from the mattress and rushing toward the bedroom door. He heard his father's voice downstairs, crisp and authoritative. Billy couldn't wait to say hello; he couldn't wait to tell his dad all about what happened, and  _especially_  to get his opinion on what happened to Mister Maniacal. Somehow, Billy thought that if he could get  _one_  validation,  _one_  person telling him that he wasn't being ridiculous,  _one_  person agreeing that "Einstein" was the stupidest insult ever because Einstein was a  _great man_  -  
  
" - we tracked him, Sarah. I hung back, but Tom was in there, he helped finish it."  
  
Billy paused at the top of the stairs, his breath held in his throat, crouching low.   
  
"Tom?" His mother sighed. "I wish you wouldn't get involved in these things, William - for one, it's dangerous, and for two, Billy was upset that you weren't here when he got home."  
  
William Campbell's shadow moved a little against the kitchen wall. "There are priorities you have to consider, dear. This is a  _villain_  who needed to be  _stopped_. You don't seem to realise that I can be with Billy _every day_  this week until I leave for England on the third. I couldn't just stand by and let that - that  _mad scientist_  get away with killing Joe!"  
  
When Billy swallowed, he noticed that his tongue felt thick in his mouth. It was like the time he'd gotten sick and the doctor had prescribed penicillin. He hadn't known that he was allergic. His body turned into a big, puffy marshmallow, and even though he knew his mother was touching his face, he couldn't feel it because it was so swollen, and he couldn't tell her that he couldn't feel it because his throat was all closed up and he was breathing through a tube.  
  
Carefully, Billy stood up, not sure whether he wanted to go downstairs any more. As a matter of fact, he was more eager now to just turn around and go back into his room, close the door, and never come out again. However, he remained there, frozen in place, feeling like someone had coated his head in Novocaine without telling him.  
  
It was true, then. He was completely alone.  
  
With this knowledge secured by the claw that seemed to tighten over his chest, Billy trudged downstairs.   
  
William brightened. "Billy, buddy! Good to see you, champ!"  
  
Billy glanced up at him. "Hey," he managed.  
  
"What happened to your eye, bud?" William frowned and inched forward, attempting to get a closer look.   
  
Billy jerked back. "Nothing," he said dispassionately, and then shifted his gaze from his father to his mother, and then back. "I'm going outside," he finally declared, and without another word, let the door click softly behind him.  
  
  


***

  
  
  
The statue of Justice Joe had received many visitors on the day of his death. Wreaths of flowers encircled his impeccable arms; garlands draped over his thick neck, and cards of grief fluttered in the light wind that threatened the tape holding them to the stone.  
  
Billy, however, hadn't come with the intention of leaving gardenias  _in memoriam_. He'd come to make peace with what he'd previously known -  
  
\- so that he could tell it goodbye.  
  
Consequently, he would also commit his first crime.  
  
Kneeling behind the cement base of the statue, Billy pulled a permanent marker from his pocket. He made sure no one was around, then uncapped it and pressed it to the stone. The little dot of black bled outward, and Billy sighed in relief - there wasn't a lot of ink left in it, and he wasn't sure it would take.  
  
It was small, but it would do. For now.  
  
With a steady hand, he started writing words by Justice Joe's feet, and he didn't stop until a couple minutes later, when the sun was threatening to disappear into the ocean and steal the last of his light.   
  
 _"The conscientious objector is a revolutionary. On deciding to disobey the law he sacrifices his personal interests to the most important cause of working for the betterment of society."_  
\- Albert Einstein  
  
Billy walked home.


	4. Exposition Three. The happiest days of our lives.

When Billy was nine years old, the thought of legitimately becoming excited about something was a dream far, far away. He just didn’t see the point of wasting his energy on something that had grown so detached from himself and who he decided he would be. His childlike awe – the very thing which caused him to develop an interest in science and math – seemed to Billy like a dead limb, a numb growth protruding useless from his body. It didn’t seem worth getting excited about any more. He went to school, brought home good grades, but everything he was taught (and subsequently learned on the side) sat marinating in a stagnant pool.   
  
Of course he couldn’t use what he knew for his own agenda. For one, no one would take a nine-year-old revolutionary seriously. For two, he wasn’t even sure what his agenda  _was_.  
  
Therefore, when the announcement of the 6-8 Interscholastic Science Fair poured out of the loudspeakers, it came as a huge surprise to Billy that he would even remotely be interested in it. He leaned his head on his hands and watched the PA box as if he could physically see the waves emitting from it when the office assistant spoke.  
  
 _“ – all students who would like to participate in the Interscholastic Science Fair are required to pick up a signature form from the main office – ”_  
  
Billy wondered what kind of project he should start. Obviously, it would be something incredible – something no one else could fathom. He remembered meandering through last year’s science fair and giving up about halfway through the exhibits; no one used their own ideas any more. All anyone ever did was take textbook experiments and regurgitate them onto cardboard dioramas, sometimes not even bothering with a physical representation to back them up. “The Life Cycle of a Butterfly,” for example. “Why Earthworms Like Wet Paper Towels” was another. It was mediocre in an unbearable way.  
  
 _Like everything else_ , Billy mused.  
  
When the bell rang, he rocketed out of his desk like the chair was on fire, bolting down the hallway toward the main office. The office never had enough forms for everyone no matter what the activity, and there was no way Billy was going to miss out on an opportunity to  _really_  show his talents just because some office aide was too lazy to make more than twenty copies at a time.  
  
Plus, first prize was usually money. That was  _always_  awesome.  
  
Panting, he flung open the door and nearly crashed into the front desk. “I’mlookingforasciencefairform,” he gasped, breathing so hard that he thought he might inhale his own tongue. Then, a pause. The aide looked at him critically, and Billy swallowed. “Please,” he added.  
  
The aide inspected her nails, then pointed halfheartedly toward a stack of papers on the very edge of the counter. Billy squinted at the pile, thinking for a moment that they couldn’t  _possibly_  be for the science fair, because it looked like they hadn’t been touched. He picked up a form and scanned over it, frowning. “Did you just put out a new stack?” Billy folded up the form and stuffed it into his pocket.  
  
Her eyebrows permanently drawn in an indifferent arch, the aide gave him a little sniff. “Nope,” she drawled. “You’re the first one to show any interest in it.” She yawned then, and it was drawn out to express exactly how much she loved working with children. “If you ask me, science fairs are  _so_  ten years ago. We’ve already discovered everything, so why do they keep beating a dead horse?”  
  
Billy arched one brow, the rest of his face falling into a disbelieving frown. “Why would you even – ” He twisted up his nose. “Seriously?” He angled his head down a little so he was staring at her through his bangs. It was a practised look – one of perfect disdain.  
  
“Uh,  _yeah_ ,” said the aide, completely disregarding both his expression and tone. Billy was offended. “If you ask me, there should be a dance instead.”  
  
Having no words left in him, the virtual trough of them sucked dry by the drought of human ignorance, Billy simply turned around and pushed the door open, making an agitated beeline for the school bus depot. His small body was instantly jarred in the twisting masses of students who wanted nothing more than to leave this place, to turn off their minds to everything until the vicious cycle began again. He didn’t even feel the dozens of collisions that people had with his shoulders, or the tug on his backpack from where someone tried, unsuccessfully, to unzip it without him noticing. Billy was thinking about his project, and how great it was going to be to finally contribute something of merit, claiming all the credit and prize money for himself. Because he  _deserved_  it.  
  
His mind wandered, and as he walked out toward the busses, he saw himself standing in front of his diorama, a large envelope in his hands. His eyes were closed, and he was speaking quite frankly with the Nobel Foundation.  
  
 _“It’s really simple. You just have to think about the mechanics of nuclear energy in an unconventional way, and you could easily power a nation.”  
  
“Oh,” said the chairman, “so I suppose you want your Nobel Prize now.”  
  
“It’s either that,” Daydream Billy smirked, “or I build a bomb.”  
  
The chairman looked thoughtful. “Well, then, I think you earned this one.”_  
  
Billy smiled. Then, with brutal force, he was ripped out of his reverie by the ringing of a bicycle bell – followed by a sickening thud as something hard connected with his back, sending him flying forward until he skidded into a sprawl on the sidewalk. “Wh –”  
  
Stupid  _Pete_. Stupid, annoying Pete with his stupid, annoying baseball bat. The cackles dissipated as the red-headed boy rode farther away, but that didn’t stop them from nestling in Billy’s ears, manipulating his nerves until they discharged the prickly anger that seemed, for a second, to consume his entire body. He lay on the ground, his eyes keenly narrowed, staring between his hand and the pavement. Blood began to seep through the raw, scraped patch on his palm. He imagined Pete as the thoughtless hero who somehow  _knew_  that he was daydreaming about building a nuke, so he’d stretched out with his dumb bat as a preemptive attack.   
  
“You’re not going to stop me, Pete,” Billy mumbled, finally pushing himself up from the ground, watching the bicycle transform into silhouette by the bright afternoon sun. He wiped his hands on his jeans. The raw spots stung, but he kept palpating them with his fingers, feeling the pain far longer than he really needed to endure it, biting his lower lip when he dug in a little bit with his fingernails. He wanted to remember what it felt like –  _really_  remember  _every single flinch_  – so that when the time came, he could inflict the same on Pete. And he  _would_.  
  
The bus loomed before him, hollow, nothing but a capsule yet but one that would soon carry a poison, unwittingly dispensing it throughout the city. Billy chose a seat at the very front, knowing that he didn’t get picked on as much – as  _much_  – when the bus driver was  _right there_.   
  
Of course, the bus driver had moods just like everyone else, and sometimes those moods were irrational, and if a half-eaten banana managed to make it into Billy’s t-shirt while she was in one of those moods, then she didn’t really  _have_  to care, did she?  
  
Billy stared at the corrugated metal wall that separated him from the steps, feeling banana mush drip down his back. It was disgusting. But he was smiling.  
  
He was smiling because he was going to build his first weapon, and it was going to win him first prize.  
  
  


***

  
  
  
The physics of laser light was an intriguing concept, one that had properties of being both visually captivating and potentially destructive. Naturally, Billy flocked to it with immeasurable enthusiasm; he treated the acquisition of parts like a treasure hunt to which only he had the map. He spent countless hours at the library reading scientific publications, most of which dealt with the population inversion of different gasses – specifically, which gasses could sustain excitability into the infrared.  
  
Billy wanted a laser that could set things on fire.  
  
He missed three full days of school, taking a spoonful of ipecac each morning so he could make a display out of throwing up loud enough for his mother to hear. Of course, Billy was a good boy and never missed school, so she made sure to call the office and schedule him a doctor’s appointment before leaving for her volunteer-whatevers that she did. Billy never asked. It was something to do with knitting.  
  
As soon as Sarah left the house ( _no_ , Mom, don’t worry about it, Mom – I just want to sleep), the young revolutionary would slip out of bed and move the big apple crate from his closet to the basement. He would put on his obnoxious yellow raincoat and the flimsy safety glasses that he’d pinched from the science classroom, and he’d set up a workstation on an old metal desk.   
  
It wasn’t easy for him to obtain some of the materials. When he found out that he couldn’t use plain CO2 from cartridges, he had to find a way to get a certain amount of a cocktail of gasses into a vacuum tube.  
  
That part was the hardest.  
  
At the end of a full month of obsessing and tweaking and taking enough erythromycin and drinking enough soda pop to turn him _self_  into a giant, rocket-powered antibiotic, the laser tube finally took full shape on the desk. Billy hadn’t tested it yet, but he hadn’t had the time. He hadn’t gotten to sleep at all the previous night just trying to write up all the documentation on his diorama, hoping that he wouldn’t be docked any points for the small print. It didn’t matter. He was  _convinced_  it would work, and he would win first prize, and then he would take it up to Pete, cradle it in his arms, and set the stupid bully’s clothes on fire.  
  
It was a complete win-win situation, and Billy liked those.  
  
Getting the laser tube over to the school on a Saturday was more difficult than he’d anticipated. Since he hadn’t told his mother that he was building a laser in the basement, he hadn’t really informed her that he’d submitted to even  _be_  in the science fair, outside of the form that he asked her to sign. Then again, there was always some form of sorts manifesting from the school, trying to cover the administration from liability in case students decided to get lost, or hurt, or shot with a laser. Therefore, she probably hadn’t noticed.  
  
Billy was counting on that. He loved his mother dearly, but she probably wouldn’t have condoned him working with volatile materials. On the other hand, that made transportation nearly  _impossible_ ; eventually, he’d ended up pulling the apple crate on the city bus with an old Radio Flyer wagon that he found in the storage shed.   
  
He thought it might have been his when he was younger. It must’ve been. He couldn’t remember, though.   
  
It was inconsequential.  
  
The bus churned and rocked upon the city streets, and Billy held the apple crate close, a furrow of discontent settling upon his brow for the entire ride. He thought that the driver might at least  _try_  to be careful, considering he’d asked him politely, even going so far as to explain that he was on his way to a Very Important Science Fair and that his project was Very Fragile. However, it seemed like the driver was swerving to hit every pothole on  _purpose_. Had that been the case, Billy wouldn’t have been surprised in the least.  
  
“Thank you,” Billy said after disembarking, only to have the doors slammed in his face.  
  
It took about ten minutes for him to lug the heavy wagon over to the gymnasium from the bus stop, but he made it just in time, his t-shirt now damp from the sweat generated by all the uphill walking. It didn’t matter, though, because by the time he’d approached the sign-in table at the front, he was beaming so much that he might as well have been a laser himself. “Billy Campbell,” he said proudly, and folded his hands behind his back.  
  
The man at the table looked through his Rolodex of fair entrants. “Nope. Got another name, kid?”  
  
Billy experienced a sensation not unlike the jolt he felt while walking down unfamiliar stairs in the dark, not being sure whether the next step existed or if he was going to be flung forward into the void by his own feet. “Um.” He dropped the handle of the wagon. “No, but I  _know_  I’m there. I signed up on the very first day!”  
  
The man grimaced, looking like he’d partaken in a huge breakfast that hadn’t agreed with him. He checked again. “Billy Campbell, you said?”  
  
Billy leaned forward hopefully. “Yeah.”  
  
There was a lengthy pause, and then the man looked up again from the Rolodex. “Nope,” he confirmed. Then, the woman sitting next to him passed him a piece of paper. He adjusted his glasses and stared down at it, eyes moving back and forth over the words. “Hang on,” he said, and Billy did. He put his hands on the table and hung on for dear life. The man shook his head. “Looks like you were pre-disqualified.”  
  
Billy’s face grew warm. “What – what do you mean?”  
  
“I mean,” the man said gruffly, suddenly seeming quite inconvenienced, “that you were pre-disqualified by your school.” He held the list out for Billy to examine. “Says that you have to be ten or older to enter, and you’re only nine.”  
  
“Why,” Billy choked out, “why wasn’t I told?”  
  
The man shrugged his monstrous shoulders. “I dunno. Next!”  
  
His eyes wide with disbelief, Billy scanned the sheet over and over, willing for the letters to rearrange themselves into words that didn’t stab mercilessly into his chest. Finally, he put the piece of paper on the table, his expression completely blank. “But – but that’s so  _stupid_.”  
  
“I don’t make the rules, kid,” the man griped, beckoning another kid forward. The colourful letters on his diorama read  _Earthworms and Wet Towels_. “I just make sure they’re being followed. Can you imagine a world without rules? Chaos, kid. It’d be chaos.” He tossed the sheet over to the side. “Next! Come on, I’m getting a line.”  
  
Billy stood there, the line braiding around him, blurs of faceless people twining around his small, still body.   
  
 _Chaos_ , he thought. He stooped down to pick up the handle of his wagon.  _I’ll give you chaos._  
  
The cafeteria was open, and no one was in sight. Billy let the handle fall again as he approached the little red fire alarm in the corner. He looked at it for a moment, his mouth moving in strange contortions as he thought about what he was going to do. Pulling the fire alarm falsely was punishable by suspension – and possible expulsion.  
  
At last, he reached out and pulled it down as hard as he possibly could. Klaxons blared immediately, coupled with sharp-strobed alarm lights, and Billy grabbed his wagon, running out of there as fast as he possibly could. He ran up to the first hill and over the top of it, disappearing down the other side, somehow forgetting, in the excitement, Isaac Newton and his immutable laws –   
  
\- and the wagon caught his heel. He stumbled, a single wheel sending him toppling into the grass while the wagon and crate rolled on, straight as an arrow until at the very last moment when it careened slightly to the left, directly into a fire hydrant.   
  
And promptly exploded.  
  
Billy pushed up from the grass, his jaw slack. Huge droplets of water from the ruptured main cascaded down his hair and face. He stood a little straighter, his hand moving of its own accord up to his forehead, where it brushed aside the bangs that clung to his eyelids.   
  
“Holy  _crap_ ,” he breathed, the tiniest of smiles tentatively twitching at the corner of his lips.   
  
Then he heard the siren. The siren that he’d called.  
  
Billy’s eyes snapped open. “Uh-oh.” He sprinted down the hill, fishing the diorama and mangled wagon out from the rest of the debris, ignoring the sharp pain in his side as he shoved both beneath his arm and took off running in the other direction.   
  
  


***

  
  
  
The city bus driver didn’t even look at him when he came aboard a half-mile away from his original stop, completely drenched, carrying the poor Radio Flyer like a neglected baby in the crook of his arm. “Mmf,” the driver grunted. “Have fun?”  
  
Billy collapsed into one of the front seats, dripping into the aisle, a huge grin spreading across his face. “ _Oh_  yeah,” he said, knowing perfectly well that the driver wasn’t listening.   
  
“Best. Science fair.  _Ever._ ”


	5. Exposition Four. Another brick in the wall (2).

Five-fifteen in the evening, and the school’s playground was entirely deserted. Football practise ended almost an hour prior, and it was like magic how the students and coaches disappeared; they were little withered grapes, plucked off the field by an invisible hand. Even the minute shadows playing against their originating objects seemed eager to hide – and they did, too, basking in the cover of a rare overcast sky.  
  
Billy scuffed his sneaker against the pavement, his oversized jersey sliding off his bony shoulder, exposing a little raw patch in the front where he’d gotten grass burn at the very start. It stung terribly, with little bits of grass and dirt and rock ground into the flesh by friction and gravity, but it didn’t sting as much as his wounded pride. There was nothing for him here, and even if he were to give the stupid sport any real effort, he knew the coach wouldn’t notice. Two games thus far this season had come and gone, and Billy sat out both of them, watching from the bench as his father regarded him anxiously (funny how he had time for this, but never the math meets) and his coach, when bothering to give Billy a glance, did so with a single unspoken question:  _Why are you here?_  
  
He pulled the fabric of the jersey back over his shoulder, lifting his chin to look at the clouds the instant he smelled rain in the air. Billy liked it when it rained; it didn’t do so nearly enough in Southern California, and when the odd half-inch or so of precipitation did deign to grace the suburbs, it was almost as refreshing to him as it was to the foliage. Of course, the air would occasionally do this thing where it would get stuffy and thick and full of that delicious rain-smell, but then the clouds would part and fall back into the ocean, and the sun would shine as brightly as it ever did without having dropped a single bit of moisture to the earth.  
  
Those days made Billy terribly angry. He always thought that was cheating.  
  
Thankfully, that wasn’t happening. A tiny drop of water fell on the top of Billy’s nose, and he instinctively scrubbed it off with his sleeve. He daydreamed briefly of getting caught in a downpour, even though those almost never occurred, and he thought about how great it would be just to lie in the grass, completely soaked, smelling the moisture and all that bacteria in the air, because the bacteria was responsible for the smell that he loved most. He wondered how many of those bacteria he consumed with a single breath, and if they continued to live in his face afterwards, making that rain-smell until they fell out of his nose or were swallowed and killed. He wondered how easy it would be to grow and harvest them from a Petri dish so that perhaps, someday, he could make his room smell like rain all the time.  
  
Billy stood up, brushing the dirt off his sweatpants and grudgingly throwing his duffel bag and backpack over either shoulder, wincing when the strap cut into the grass burn just enough to make him once more jarringly aware of its presence. He’d told his mother that he would get a ride home from someone as soon as practise was over so that she wouldn’t have to drive, but in reality, he just wanted to strand himself so that he would have no choice but to walk home or take the bus. The city was a sprawling monster, and Billy was in the phase of his childhood where monsters fascinated him. It seemed a pity that a parasite couldn’t be more acquainted with its host, or that most parasites simply chose not to be, sucking and clawing at the skin of the city without any thought for its condition or whether it had anything left to give. It made him think about the rain-smell bacteria in his nose, and he sneezed reflexively.   
  
"Billy!"  
  
Turning with a start, Billy darted his gaze about the school grounds, trying to determine the origin of the shout. At last, he saw a familiar silhouette moving toward him, but he couldn’t confirm his guess without _really_  squinting to see the man’s features. "Mr Baumsbury?"  
  
The teacher jogged a little bit to put less distance between them in a shorter amount of time. "What’re you still doing here, Mr Campbell? I thought you left hours ago."  
  
Billy glanced toward the street running parallel to the front of the school, and he wondered if his Language Arts teacher would take too much offence if he just decided to not engage in conversation and make a run for it instead. Mr Baumsbury was one of the few teachers he’d had in middle school who actually seemed to be interested in whether or not Billy was learning anything, and inexplicably for that reason, Billy found him terrifying.  
  
"Nothing," Billy mumbled, pulling his thumb out from behind the strap of the duffel before it cut off circulation to the tip. He pointed to the football field. "Practise."  
  
Mr Baumsbury arched his eyebrows and approached Billy thoughtfully. "Football?"  
  
"Yup," Billy said. He shoved his hands in his pockets and twisted a little while he looked at the ground, feeling the weight of his bags as they sped him up and made twisting the other way twice as difficult, trying to lose himself in self-inflicted inertia. He blinked. It was starting to make him dizzy.   
  
The teacher scratched at the white hair on his neck, then pushed his glasses up his nose. He frowned. "Do you have a ride home?"  
  
"No," Billy answered, and then jerked up with the awareness of what he just said. "I mean, yes," he corrected himself. "Of course I do."  
  
Folding his arms, Mr Baumsbury eyed him suspiciously. "Do you or don’t you?" He shook his head. "It’s not a difficult question, Billy."  
  
"I said  _yes_ ," Billy snapped, almost completely unaware of his own tone of voice and attitude until it came out of his mouth. For an instant, he looked surprised – but he didn’t apologise; instead, he stood a little firmer, his shoulders angled down a little more, and the toe of his sneaker driving into the dirt with enough force to make a two-inch deep crater.  
  
Mr Baumsbury eased himself down onto the curb next to Billy, grunting a little when his back protested the change in position. He looked up and narrowed his eyes against the bright and grey. "Mind if I wait with you?" He pulled a pack of unfiltered Camels from the breast pocket of his crisp plaid button-up, then struck a match against the curb and lit it. The smoke made little curls in the air.   
  
Billy made a face and took a step back. "You can’t smoke on school grounds," he said petulantly.  
  
" _You_  can’t loiter on the grounds after four," replied Mr Baumsbury, taking a long pull off his cigarette. "Guess we’re both breaking the rules."  
  
Billy pressed a hand to his stomach, feeling a little tightening of some peculiar emotion when Mr Baumsbury started talking about rule-breaking. It wasn’t quite anxiety, but it was something related, mixed in with a little bit of excitement. It was enough to cause the corner of his lip to pull up, and he fought hard against it, like he did whenever someone said a gross and immature joke.   
  
To his dismay, it was also enough to suddenly interest him in the man’s company. Billy sat back down on the curb, but he made sure that he looked very inconvenienced by his teacher’s presence, even throwing in a disheartened sigh. What he didn’t know how to solve was the problem that he didn’t have a ride home, and if Mr Baumsbury stayed long enough, he would know that. It wouldn’t take his mother long after that to find out that he’d lied – and  _that_  would be the end of his ability to explore the city after school. He cradled his chin between his hands and leaned on his knees.   
  
 _Should’ve run_ , he thought miserably.  
  
Mr Baumsbury gave Billy a look out of the corner of his eye, then focused on the idle rings he was making with his mouth. "You a good football player?"  
  
Billy swallowed and stared at the ground. His shoulder gave a hot pulse through his jersey, as if Billy was planning on forgetting the scrape existed. He scoffed. "I’m a great football player."  
  
"Ah," said Mr Baumsbury. "The whole ‘great things come in small packages,’ thing, I take it."  
  
Bristling, Billy pulled the strap down off his arm and fidgeted with it while he waited for a ride that would never come. "I guess," he muttered.  
  
"Do you like it?"  
  
"Like  _what_?" Billy tugged on a frayed string, then ripped it off the handle.  
  
Mr Baumsbury simply smiled. "Football."  
  
"I said I was good at it," Billy said, gritting his teeth. He wished the teacher would get bored with him already and leave. Maybe then he might be able to make an escape. All he had to do was sit silently until the old man finished his cigarette and then he might be left alone.  
  
"Doesn’t answer my question." Mr Baumsbury stretched his arms behind his back and leaned his hands against the blacktop. "You can be good at something and love it, or you can be good at something and hate it. Or both. Or somewhere in between."  
  
Billy frowned. "Does it matter?"  
  
"Sure, it matters." The cigarette wiggled in his mouth as he spoke, and Billy thought it looked a little like one end of a see-saw with no one on it. He had to suppress the urge to smile again. Mr Baumsbury, as if sensing the subtle mockery, shifted it over to the side of his mouth where it would wiggle even more. "If you don’t like what you’re doing, then you’d better find something else you  _do_  like before you get trapped."  
  
"Tch," Billy said, immediately turning back to look at the ground. His voice was dripping with sarcasm. "Like you enjoy being a teacher, right?"  
  
Mr Baumsbury turned to Billy and gave him a quirky, toothy smile. "’Course I enjoy being a teacher. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t do it."  
  
Billy was silent while he tried to wrap his head around the concept of actually liking what he considered to be one of the most thankless professions in the world. The only other teacher he’d ever known who’d admitted to liking her job was Miss Swanson in the second grade, and he knew that she only liked it because she hated children and it was  _really_  easy to be mean to second graders without getting caught. "Don’t tell me you actually think you’re moulding young minds," he murmured.  
  
The smoke braided around Mr Baumsbury’s fingers, and he shooed it away with a flick of his hand. "I don’t know," he admitted. "Am I?"  
  
Scuffing his shoe again on the curb, Billy glared at his knees. He didn’t think it was fair for Mr Baumsbury to put that kind of question on him. He couldn’t answer for the rest of his classmates. "Why’re you even asking me this?"  
  
Mr Baumsbury laughed. It was rich and warm, and it made Billy angry. "Sorry. I don’t mean to put you on the spot. I just like hearing you answer questions. It’s refreshing. Like – oh, what was that," he flicked his cigarette, "that essay you wrote for the current events segment."  
  
"The one you gave me seventy-five percent on?" Billy said acerbically.  
  
"On which I gave you seventy-five percent, and yes," replied Mr Baumsbury. "And if you think I gave you that grade because I didn’t like it, you’re mistaken."  
  
Billy squinted at his teacher, willing for him to make sense for once. "So you took away twenty-five points because you liked it." He returned his gaze to the ground. "Huh. Good to know."  
  
"I took away twenty-five points because it wasn’t an opinion essay," Mr Baumsbury chuckled. "It was an exercise in summary. You, on the other hand, are very opinionated."  
  
"But I summarised it," Billy argued.  
  
"But you weren’t objective."  
  
"I can’t  _be_  objective."  
  
Mr Baumsbury looked like he was fighting hard to keep from grinning, and Billy didn’t know why he was even trying. So, he had an opinion. So, that part of him was being mocked again. It wasn’t the first time, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. Billy gripped the curb and swore that if Mr Baumsbury so much as smiled, he was going to squeeze it until the concrete broke off in his hand or vice-versa, whichever happened first.  
  
He didn’t smile. In fact, his face was at the most neutral Billy had ever seen it, lips creasing naturally over another Camel cigarette, which he lit with just as much ease as the first. Billy’s mother only smoked when she was stressed out or unhappy, so he had to wonder why Mr Baumsbury smoked so much if he loved being a teacher.  
  
"Let me ask you something," Mr Baumsbury said, turning his body a little to better see Billy when he looked at him head-on. "You ever think about writing for the school paper?"  
  
"No," Billy gaped, quite certain of the honesty layered beneath all the disdain in his tone. "It’s crap." A pause. "Sorry. I mean, it’s bad."  
  
Mr Baumsbury raised an eyebrow. "I’m in charge of that crap, you know."  
  
Billy shifted uncomfortably. "I know," he sighed, not having recalled that particular detail until the moment before his teacher spoke. Somehow, he figured it wouldn’t matter anyway. He wasn’t going to win, so he might as well give up.  
  
"But, you’re right," said Mr Baumsbury, and he regarded Billy with total,  _unnerving_  nonchalance. "I think the journalism club is the cutest group o’ punkins in the whole school, and gee-golly if they aren’t great writers,  _but_  –" he took a drag – "it’s all fluff." He exhaled. "School newspaper is a school  _news_ paper, and that’s not what we’ve got right now."  
  
Billy rolled his eyes. "People like fluff."  
  
"Billy, Billy, Billy. What’s the news taught you?"  
  
"Communism is bad."  
  
Mr Baumsbury smirked. "Besides that."  
  
"I don’t know." Billy picked up a piece of gravel and rolled it between his fingers. He wondered if he should tell Mr Baumsbury that he had no ride, effectively eliminating any reason for the teacher to wait with him.  
  
"The news exists," Mr Baumsbury said, "so that people can feel like they’re forming opinions on things that wouldn’t otherwise matter to them. They’re hearing about things for the first time, and how they hear it is going to affect their perception of those issues in a major way." He took a drag, then let the cigarette wiggle again between his teeth. "Basically, you get to be in charge, in a way, of what the whole school thinks." He shrugged. "Lot of people don't see it that way, though, which is how we get who's-dating-whom articles and 'how to wear your hat.'"   
  
"It's middle school, though," Billy said. "Kids don't think. They think they have it bad enough trying to remember when assignments are due and studying for tests and practising for games and thinking about how they look to everyone else - " he took a breath - "it just doesn't occur to them to pay attention to anything outside their little bubbles."  
  
Mr Baumsbury looked at Billy askance. "You talk about kids like you aren't one of them."  
  
Billy turned bright red and hugged his knees close to his body. "So what?"  
  
Pulling his cigarette out of his mouth and stubbing it out on the blacktop, Mr Baumsbury fell into a brief spell of contemplation, his soft, blinking eyes the only indication that he hadn't turned into a statue. Then, he pressed one hand to his leg and the other to the curb, pushing himself up. "If you want to play football instead, then I'm not going to stop you. It's a great sport. Our school's famous for it." He tilted his head. "But - and I'm just throwing this out there - if you happened to show interest in, say, an opinion column, something to show off those great writing chops, then feel free to hand in a sample." He smiled. "It's a good way to get others to hear your voice. And if your summary assignments are any indication, it seems like that's pretty important to you."  
  
"Yeah, sure," said Billy disinterestedly; however, the gears were already starting to turn. He  _hated_  football, but it seemed to be the only thing he could do that would capture his father's interest. On the other hand, his father watched the news every night whenever he was home. Not only that, but to be given a chance to literally force other people to see what he was thinking - to be responsible for single-handedly changing life as he knew it within the public school system?  
  
Maybe it wasn't that huge. But it  _could be_. It was still a lot to consider.   
  
Mr Baumsbury looked at his watch. "Your mom's late." He regarded Billy with mild interest. "I could give her a call."  
  
Billy shook his head. "Maybe she got the times wrong," he lied. It was funny in a weird sort of way - only two years ago, he wouldn't have even  _considered_  lying to an adult. Now, he did it with almost expert grace. And all the people who told him that it was more difficult to lie were wrong. It was so much easier. "It's okay, I was just thinking of taking the bus, anyway."  
  
His teacher didn't look like he was buying it, but he gave a meager nod nonetheless. "Just get home safe, okay? Don't talk to any strangers, don't take any candy; you know the drill."  
  
Billy scrunched up his nose and stood up, hastily throwing his bags over his shoulder. "Uh, okay." He started off at a jog toward the bus stop. "'Bye-Mr-Baumsbury-see-you-tomorrow," he chanted with a breath, his footsteps bouncing the words.  
  
"Remember what I said, Mr Campbell!" shouted the teacher to a swiftly-retreating form.  
  
Billy didn't answer. But he was never going to forget.  
  
  


***

  
  
  
Ten o'clock on a school night, and Billy sat in front of his family's brand new Apple IIc Plus, his fingers moving furiously over the keys. His dinner sat beside him on the desk, cold and practically untouched.  
  
He'd written over two thousand words, and he had to restrain himself from writing more.  
  
The period of frantic typing was followed by another where he merely stared at the screen, his face contorted into an almost comical expression of concentration.   
  
At last, he typed a few characters in the save dialog box.  
  
 _ifiruledtheworld.cwk_  
  
And like the good boy he was, he cleaned up his dinner, brushed his teeth, and went to bed.


	6. Exposition Five. Mother.

The school newspaper, inappropriately named  _The Paramount_ , was one of the most slipshod pieces of amateur literature ever to litter a hallway. Headlined by titles such as "What's In" and "The Dating Corner," it served no purpose other than being a continuous reminder of the vapidity of the student body and the fact that there was likely no redeeming quality to the same. Still, without fail, Billy found himself in the press office - better known as Classroom 128 - every day after school. For the first few weeks, he'd made it clear that it was only a shallow interest in keeping a hobby that drew him there, and he wrote his opinion articles to be published in the Friday editions. Later, after he'd made a few acidic remarks to Mr Baumsbury about the shoddy spelling and grammar employed by several of his fellow writers, he became the student editor. He read every bit of garbage that the newspaper staff churned out, and he made corrections just so he would feel less shame from being associated with it.  
  
Not that anyone noticed. It seemed worth it, though. Somehow.  
  
It was three-fifteen on a Wednesday, and the last of the students were trickling out of the classroom, jostling Billy as he swam upstream, caught in a sea of blank faces, expressions that  _conveyed_  but didn't really  _mean_  anything, hearing murmurs of conversations that didn't matter. He finally squeezed through the last of them, positioning himself at the corner desk in the back of the room, the only one with a word processor that didn’t lock up the computer whenever he opened a file.  
  
 _One of these days_ , he thought, jamming the floppy into the drive so that it would catch,  _technology is going to actually make things easier._  The drive spat the disk back out, and he tried again.  _One of these days._  
  
The article he was editing was complete filler – a humour article that was supposed to take knock-knock jokes and insult quips and replace the subjects of each with stereotypes at his school. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t get any of them, so aside from fixing the odd spelling error and actually employing semi-colons where appropriate, he let the rest of it slide. If he fixed it to the point of actually making it funny, it would change the entire article, and the only person laughing would be him.  
  
Billy glanced up, his fingers frozen above the keys. That  _was_  an interesting thought.  
  
“Mr Baumsbury,” he said casually, flicking the space bar with his thumb, “what are the limits of editorial license?”  
  
Mr Baumsbury looked up from the paper he was grading, looking at Billy over the rims of his glasses. “What do you mean?”  
  
Billy frowned, trying to think of the most neutral way to say what he had in his head. “Like, if I see a way to improve an article or whatever by changing or adding a sentence or two, could I do that?”  
  
The look on his teacher’s face was strained, as if he were trying to pick Billy’s sentence apart. Finally, he gave him a tentative smile. “Don’t see why not, as long as the article’s content doesn’t change.”  
  
His face melting into a genuine smile, Billy turned back to the computer. “Thanks.”  
  
“Uh-huh,” said Mr Baumsbury.  
  
Billy pulled up another article, this one on the merits of middle-school fashion know-how.  
  
 _Here is what’s in: jelly shoes! These can be worn with anything, like jeans or stirrup leggings._  
  
He altered it.   
  
 _What’s in: jelly shoes! These can be worn with jeans, stirrup leggings, paper bags or human scalps. They’re just that fashionable!_  
  
Billy started giggling.  
  
“Something funny, Billy?” asked Mr Baumsbury.   
  
Immediately, Billy caught himself, stifling the rest of his laughter by chewing on the side of his index finger. “Um,” he stalled, pulling up the other file. “Uh, this. This here. Um, how many mascots does it take to change a light bulb?”  
  
Mr Baumsbury gave him a strange look, then shook his head and went back to grading papers.  
  
At that moment, Billy decided that he liked being the student editor.  
  
  


***

  
  
  
Days turned into weeks. Billy’s mother made the occasional comment that she wanted to be the first to know when he decided to move his bed into the school, and Billy would respond with something appropriately dismissive. At the time, it didn’t  _seem_  like he was spending a lot of his time there. Granted, Mr Baumsbury had stopped making things up to do so he could wait for him in the classroom, only kept in contact with his mother to guarantee he was okay to stay, and then told him to turn off the light and lock the door behind him when he was ready to leave.  
  
That is, until winter hit (or what passed for winter in Southern California) and he started having to call his mom for a ride after he was through writing for the day, because she wouldn’t let him ride the bus after dark.  
  
After  _dark._    
  
It wasn’t like he was spending the entire time writing for the school newspaper, even though that’s what he told everyone else. He’d actually started his own series of articles comprised of the stuff that Mr Baumsbury wouldn’t let him publish (“I don’t think the other students will really  _get_  this,” he would say) and mixed it with his own brand of dark humour. He would take those articles and write stories based on them, introducing himself as the main character. Billy, in the stories, was Mister Horrible (the public named him after the notorious villain Mister Maniacal, of course, and the fact that they thought he was really horrible), and he would do things like invade City Hall with his one hundred minions and hold everyone hostage. He would give the lawmakers a choice every time: re-pave the roads or give all the politicians a raise? There was always a right answer and a wrong answer, and the wrong answer would get everyone shot with a ray gun.  
  
Billy wasn’t fooling himself. A lot of people got shot in his stories.  
  
One night, the sun had at last disappeared behind the houses on the hill, leaving the last harsh fluorescent orange rays to cut through the wisps of his hair and force their reflection on the monitor. Billy stood up, disgusted by the sudden glare. He looked around the windowpane for the string that controlled the blinds; for some reason, like everything else in the school, it managed to magically cease to exist whenever he needed it. Like now.   
  
When he located it, it was lodged up at the top of the blind bar, twisted up into itself like one of the string games – cat’s cradle, wasn’t it? – that the girls in his grade liked to play. He never understood the appeal of twisting string into patterns, especially when he could make better, more accurate, and more complicated patterns using LOGO on the computer (and only weeks later, when Billy discovered Lisp, he found out that patterns weren’t even the half of programming language capability). He guessed it had something to do with the tangibility of the string, or improving finger dexterity, or whatever.   
  
It was inconsequential.  
  
Billy dragged a chair over to the cabinets and decided to take a risk in trusting the cabinets’ stability. He positioned the chair in the middle of the countertop, and then climbed on top of both while they were stacked. His only real challenge was keeping himself from looking down while trying to ensure he didn’t move too far to the side. As much as he’d noted the attractiveness of a cast to his classmates, he  _really_ didn’t want one. At least, he didn’t want one from something as lame as trying to untangle the blinds string.   
  
The string wasn’t as tangled as he thought, and it didn’t take but a couple of tugs to get it to loosen enough to where he could pull them closed. He was almost finished with the entire ordeal when he heard voices down the hall – sudden voices, a loud laugh, startling him and causing him to lose his footing on the chair. It slid out from beneath him, and there was a crash, and he fell, but the sound of the chair flying to the linoleum below shocked him more than landing on the counter did –   
  
“Hang on,” said one of the voices.  
  
Billy curled up on the counter, trying to determine without opening his eyes whether or not he could move to a sitting position without actually falling to the floor. It didn’t occur to him, for some reason, that opening his eyes might help, but the counter was cool and comfortable – oddly – and he didn’t really see any reason to move at that precise moment –   
  
“Oh my God, are you okay?”  
  
Billy finally opened his eyes. He wished he hadn’t. Standing in front of him was Lisa Perelli, a goddess with Italian blood and the deepest, most beautiful brown eyes. She was in  _eighth grade_ , and she was _popular_ , and she was  _talking to him._  
  
He swallowed. “Ngh,” he said plainly, and promptly fell off the counter.  
  
Lisa stooped down, brushing back a handful of those fantastic dark brown locks. She tentatively pulled at his arm until he was sitting up. “Do you need a teacher? I can call Mrs Mitch, she’s not that far.”  
  
Mrs Mitch was the head of the drama club, and Billy only processed the fact that she existed in tandem with Lisa Perelli, who was still hunched over him, her early endowment very close to Billy’s face, with her hair smelling like apples. He imagined her on stage, and he didn’t realise he was supposed to respond until she ultimately realised that he wasn’t looking at her face and pushed him away, appearing somewhat uncomfortable. “Hello? I’m up here,” she said, somewhat miffed.  
  
Billy shook his head and scrunched up his nose, irritated at how quickly a good daydream could be interrupted by reality. “I’m okay,” he said. He scrambled to his feet, trying to play off the fact that he was terrified of her by introducing a little bit of hostility to his voice. “Wh-what do you want?”  
  
Lisa folded her arms. “I heard the crash, so I wanted to make sure that nobody broke their neck or anything.” She lifted her chin a little higher, putting on an air of superiority. “I’m the student body president, that’s what I’m supposed to do.”  
  
“So if you weren’t the student body president,” Billy said, “you wouldn’t do anything if someone had a broken neck.”  
  
“That’s not what I said,” Lisa sighed. “So – wait.” She frowned. “What are you still doing here? Students aren’t allowed in the building by themselves after four.”  
  
Billy looked down, mumbling desperately. “What are  _you_  still doing here?”  
  
“I’m in a  _play_ ,” Lisa said.  
  
“What were you doing in the hallway, then?”  
  
“Running lines.” Lisa put her hands on her hips. “Anyway, you didn’t answer my question.” She glanced over to the computer, then tilted her head at the open document. Billy watched her gaze, feeling his joints and muscles seize up with a panic, an indelible cement that prevented him from doing anything about her peeking.   
  
But she didn’t move.  
  
Billy’s voice seemed to catch on a little bit of the cement that had somehow worked its way into his throat, but the warbled sound that came out was definitely authoritative, or so he thought. He  _had_  authority to be here – why couldn’t he tell her? It was frustrating. Yes, she was pretty; yes, she could destroy him. But did he really need to seize up like this?  
  
“Guh,” he tried.   
  
She narrowed her eyes at him for a moment, and then her face lit up as if with the combined epiphanies of the Dubliners. “Are you Billy Campbell?”  
  
He jutted his chin forward, his typically soft features taken over by a disbelieving expression. “ _What?_ ”   
  
Lisa smiled. “The student editor. The one who writes the neat articles on current events in the school paper. That’s you, right?”  
  
Billy’s mouth dropped open. “What are you  _talking_  about?”  
  
Her smile faded quickly into an uncertain grimace. “If you aren’t, you could just say no.”  
  
“I-I am,” he stuttered, “I mean, I was – well, I still am – but it’s not, I just don’t –” Billy looked like he was running out of breath. Lisa furrowed her brow. Billy glared. “Why do you even  _care?_ ”  
  
Then, the words that she said were actually filtered through his mind, and the glare magically transformed into a look of wonder. “Wait. Neat?”  
  
Lisa choked with a bit of her own laughter. “Uh,  _yeah_.”  
  
His face now bright red, Billy went over to the computer to minimise the window of the story he was working on. He was positive that she wouldn’t think  _that_  was neat. He imagined her look of disbelief as she read about his forays into fictional villainy.  _Nerd._  He cleared his throat. “You –” he coughed – “you read them?”  
  
She frowned. “Are you okay? You look like you’re going to throw up.”  
  
Billy paled considerably, which didn’t lend much weight to his argument. “Yeah.”  
  
Lisa righted the fallen chair and sat down. “Anyway, yeah, I read them. And I agree with most of it. I just didn’t know that you were so – so –”  
  
Billy raised his eyebrows. “So  _what?_ ”  
  
“Young,” Lisa said carefully. “You look really young.” She swung her legs under the seat. “I mean, my parents are political activists, and you write about the stuff they talk about all the time.” She brushed a piece of hair behind her ear, and suddenly Billy became obsessed with that one cluster of hair on her head, the one that she touched, and he wanted to count the hairs that made it up. It didn’t seem odd at the time, but later on he would certainly question his motives. “Except when you write about it, I can actually understand it and know what I’m agreeing with.”  
  
Billy gulped down the ball of emotions that had gathered in his oesophagus and lent a nervous chuckle to the stagnant air. “I can see that happening a lot,” he said.  
  
She gave him a confused look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”  
  
Suddenly spotlighted, Billy walked over to sit back down in the computer chair before his legs threatened to give out on him. “Well, it’s like –” again, the  _idea_  formed crystal clear in his mind, but finding the words to describe it was proving difficult – “it’s like dominoes, except with generations. One person has ideals and beliefs based on a certain amount of fact, and that person passes it down to their offspring –”  
  
“ _Offspring?_ ” Lisa looked dubious.  
  
Billy sighed. “Terminology aside, hear me out?”  
  
A mirroring exhalation. Silence. “Yeah, go ahead.”  
  
“Anyway, that person passes it to their offspring, children, carriers of genetic material, whatever, and they don’t really know why they’re believing what they’re believing, but the strength of their conviction seems to be inversely proportional to how much they actually know about whatever it is they’re trying to defend.”  
  
“Wh-what?” Lisa’s eyes widened.  
  
Billy unclenched his fists and folded his hands in his lap. “Um, the less people know about something, the more they’ll argue their point with regards to it.”  
  
“Oh.” Lisa paused for a moment, looking at the ground, deep in thought. Then, she jerked her head up. “Are you saying my parents don’t know what they’re talking about?”  
  
Billy’s jaw dropped. “Uh. What?”  
  
“You’re saying,” Lisa began, her voice shaking, “that since my parents argue  _passionately_  for their causes, that they don’t know what they’re talking about?” She gave a disgusted huff and stood from the chair. “Oh my God. I can’t believe you would say something like that. I can’t believe – ugh!”   
  
And in a whirl of dark hair and apples, before Billy could protest, before he could explain, she was gone.   
  
Billy watched the empty doorframe with the same surprised expression for upwards of ten minutes, occasionally moving his lips to begin words that would never leave his chest, where they began and then fell, cluttering around his ribs, building a tightness there that would spread to his limbs and infect them with the same prickly anger that he was subject to whenever Pete beat him up.   
  
He wasn’t going to cry. He  _wasn’t._    
  
She just didn’t understand.  
  
Turning back to his story, he found his fingers too stiff to type. He found his mind too distracted to focus. It was weird; for a moment – a few full minutes, actually – Billy thought he’d finally connected with someone. He thought he might have made a friend.  
  
After ten more minutes of staring at his fingers, he finally saved the story and called his mom for a ride home.  
  
The next day, Billy found himself in the same spot, wondering where all the time was going when he hadn’t written a single sentence since he sat down in the chair. He let the rays blind him; he didn’t know what the point was of seeing the screen when he didn’t have anything to type.  
  
A voice issued behind him, small and meek. “Billy?”  
  
Billy turned around so quickly that he knocked the mouse onto the floor. He rushed to pick it up, and hit his head on the corner of the desk when he straightened. “Nngh,” he mumbled, not hesitant to shoot Lisa Perelli a defiant glare, even though her hair was still amazing, she still smelled like apples, and she was still well-endowed for her age group. “What do  _you_  want?” he snapped.  
  
Lisa sat down in a chair a few feet away from him. “I’m sorry,” she said, her cheeks turning pink with embarrassment. “You were right.”  
  
There was a stunned silence. Billy’s voice was hoarse. “I was?” Another pause followed, and then he folded his arms. “I mean, of course I was.”  
  
Ignoring his sudden bravado, Lisa crossed her ankles and gripped the edge of the chair as if loosening her fingers would cause her to fall off it and into the void. “My parents have no idea what they’re talking about,” she said, “and I think they just realised that they’re on different sides.”  
  
“Isn’t that the point of politics and debate, though?” Billy arched his eyebrows.  
  
“Yeah, I guess,” Lisa said softly. “Except now they’re getting a divorce.”  
  
Billy pressed his lips together, and then let them separate with a light pop. “Oh,” he said. He swallowed, then looked over to the window, and then swallowed again.   
  
“That sucks.”  
  
  


***

  
  
  
Days turned into weeks. The time spent in Classroom 128 was now divided into the time Billy devoted to working on his stories and the time that Billy and Lisa talked about politics – mostly, although conversation did tend to drift toward more personal subjects, because politics, like any other science, could only detach itself from the human heart for so long – and slowly but surely emptied out the vending machine in the Language Arts hallway.  
  
He saved her wrappers.  
  
Sometimes, Lisa would talk about her family, and ask about his. Billy was uncomfortable talking about his father, which was something of a subconscious payback for Billy’s father being reluctant to talk about _him_. One day, he mentioned his unwillingness to participate in football during the fall, and Lisa told him that yeah, he didn’t look like he wanted to be there, and Billy was astonished that she remembered him, and Lisa looked down and said that he stuck out because he wasn’t very good.  
  
He took one of the pencils out of her backpack when she wasn’t looking, and put it in a shoebox at home.  
  
Then, the day came when Lisa’s parents had their first real all-out screaming  _fight_. They had the kind of fight where Lisa’s dad accused Lisa’s mom of being a bleeding-heart liberal who cared more about the drunken bums on the street than her own husband, and she smacked him across the face, and then he  _looked_  like he was going to hit her, but he didn’t because he “wasn’t going to stoop to her level.” And then, without so much as a goodbye, Lisa’s dad walked out on her and her mother, slamming the door behind him. Lisa told Billy that she didn’t understand how a static, inanimate issue could be enough to tear apart a marriage that had lasted fifteen years. Billy didn’t know how to answer her. He said it could happen to anyone; it probably had happened to hundreds of people, and it would probably happen to a hundred more. That’s when Lisa started crying, and Billy apologised a million times – or, it  _had_  to have been that many; he lost count – but she kept shaking her head and telling him that it wasn’t his fault, and that he was a really good friend, and she  _really_  appreciated him listening to her. Or, that’s what he thought she said. Her words were little hiccups in her throat, and they were often covered in saline and snot.  
  
Billy got her a tissue from Mr Baumsbury’s desk, and when she took it from him, she stood up and hugged him awkwardly, as if he were a misshapen wooden block that she couldn’t quite get her arms around.  
  
He discreetly fished her tissue out of the wastebasket and stuck it in his pocket.  
  
In the bloom of spring, there were no plays in the middle school theatre, only plans for dances and sports meets. Billy worked alone for three whole weeks without Lisa’s company, and he couldn’t even find her during the day to ask her why she wasn’t coming by the press room anymore; although, it wasn’t as if she made much of an effort to talk to him during the day in the beginning.   
  
Strangely, he understood. It hurt, but he understood. And he would take what he could get.  
  
In May, a couple of days after the Spring Tolo (which Billy neglected to attend), he locked the door to Classroom 128 and made his way down to the end of the hall to wait for his mother. He sat down on the bench and thought about his latest story, and he wondered how many people Mister Horrible would have to hold hostage before the pretend heroes and the pretend politicians would get the point.  
  
“Billy!”  
  
Billy jerked up at the familiar voice, his lips curling into a tentative grin. “Lisa, hi!” He stood up, now that he recognised her fully, and allowed a genuine smile to settle on his mouth. “I haven’t seen you in _forever!_  Wait, no, that isn’t right, but you know what I mean, how –”   
  
He stopped. Lisa wasn’t smiling. His own grin faded. “What’s wrong?”  
  
“I was hoping you hadn’t left yet,” she said, catching her breath. “I thought you’d gone already, and that would’ve sucked  _so much_  –”  
  
“What’s going on?” Billy said again, walking the rest of the way to the middle of the hall so she wouldn’t hyperventilate.   
  
Lisa opened her mouth, and then abruptly closed it, staring at her feet. She looked like she was carrying lit firecrackers inside her, and if she didn’t let them out, she was going to explode.  
  
Finally, she walked over to the bench where Billy had been sitting before, and collapsed on it beneath an invisible weight. She looked up at him pitifully. “I’m moving, Billy.”  
  
Billy frowned, then squinted at her, then sat down beside her, his gaze on the floor straight ahead. He turned to look at her. “Where to?”  
  
“Portland,” Lisa answered. “My mom and I are moving up to live with her parents until we find a new place to live.” She let out a breath as if she’d been holding it. “The divorce was quicker than we expected it to be. Dad didn’t want much.”  
  
Billy sucked in air through his teeth and tried to keep from staring at her. “Is that why you didn’t come to the press room anymore?”  
  
Lisa wiped a hand across her eyes. “Kinda.”  
  
Tilting his head, Billy waited for the rest of her answer, until he couldn’t stand it anymore and glanced up at her face, wondering why she wasn’t making eye contact. Lisa was never afraid of making eye contact when she talked to someone, and that’s one of the things that Billy found so wonderful about her. “What do you mean, ‘kinda?’ It’s a yes or no question.”  
  
More silence followed his inquiry, and it was starting to agitate him a little. What was so difficult about answering his question? He wondered if she was going to say that she just didn’t want to be around him anymore, and if that were the case, it should be a lot easier to get out than she was making it out to be.  
  
“I like you, Billy,” Lisa said, and at last she made the eye contact that Billy had been anticipating.  
  
Billy watched her pupils constrict a little with the change in light, and he thought about the little pin lights in the doctor’s office that made you feel like they were trying to see into your brain. He couldn’t see into her brain, and he wished he could, because what she was saying made no sense to him whatsoever in context. Actually, it didn’t make sense at all.  
  
“What?” he croaked.  
  
Lisa sighed heavily, tossing back her hair in frustration. “I found out I was moving last month, and I figured if I just didn’t see you, I’d get over it, because it’s stupid, you know? I’m almost  _fourteen_ , and you’re – I don’t even know how old you are, you’re not even supposed to be in  _middle school_  yet, God, how old are you, anyway?”  
  
“Um,” Billy said slowly, “ten.”  
  
Burying her head in her hands, Lisa shook her head. “Ten. Oh my God. You’re ten.”  
  
“What –” Billy began, but she wouldn’t let him finish.  
  
“It’s dumb that I even like you in the first place,” she continued, tears forming once more in the corners of her eyes. She wiped them away angrily. “I  _have_  a boyfriend, and I like  _him_  plenty, and if anyone ever found out that I liked you, I’d be laughed out of the school –”  
  
Billy froze, finally piecing together bits of the conversation. It was like at first, his subconscious was protecting him from himself, because the thought of it seemed too good to be true. He would’ve killed his subconscious if he’d had the chance, because now everything was hitting him all at once and he thought if he let go of the bench, he would pass out.   
  
“ – because do you know what people say about you? They think you’re a freak, Billy, and even though I know – even though I like you, I can’t say I like you, because I’m  _student body president_  –”  
  
Billy looked down, swinging his legs under the bench idly, his heart rate through the roof, the soft motion of his bangs moving back and forth across his face obscuring a tiny, irascible twitch beneath his left eye. When it left him alone, he looked up. “But you’re moving anyway.”   
  
Lisa shook her head. “Billy, you’re so  _stupid._ ”  
  
Well,  _he_  thought it made sense.  
  
And then she kissed him.  
  
It was nothing at all like he expected. He expected a kiss from a girl, even more so Lisa Perelli, to be soft and warm and dry, because spit is supposed to stay inside someone’s mouth unless they drool – and besides, that’s how it always looked in the movies. But Lisa’s kiss was a little sticky, and it moved around a lot because she was wearing lip gloss. It smelled like fake strawberries and wax.  
  
Once he realised that  _Lisa Perelli_  was  _kissing_  him, he stiffened his neck up completely and closed his eyes, refusing to move his head because he didn’t want to screw it up.  
  
Then, as quick as it started, she moved her head away and stood up, leaving him dazed. “I gotta go, Billy. Don’t tell anyone, okay?”  
  
Billy tried to nod, but his neck was still frozen. He tried to speak, too, but that was out of the question because his mouth was still full of Lisa-kiss and he didn’t want to let it escape.  
  
Lisa adjusted the strap on her backpack and gave him a strange look that he couldn’t decipher at first through his clouded mind – pity? Remorse? – before she turned around and walked briskly down the hall without saying goodbye.   
  
It took two minutes of his mother honking the horn of her Lexus before Billy realised that he was still inside the school. He jumped up and ran out to her, and he  _almost_  told her that he’d been kissed by a girl with spit and everything, and he didn’t even think it was gross because he  _believed_  – and this was just a theory – that he might be old enough to have the special chemicals in his brain that obscure the actual grossness of girl spit, or spit in general, because does she  _know_  how much  _gross_  is in the human mouth?  
  
However, he promised Lisa he wouldn’t tell anyone, so he slipped wordlessly into the front seat and folded his hands in his lap, trying not to shake too much, desperate not to give himself away.  
  
“How was school?” Sarah asked him.  
  
“Okay,” he said.  
  
  


***

  
  
  
The next day, Billy found out that it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d told anyone, because somehow the whole school knew. He could tell from the whispers, and from the knowing glances – mostly, it was because people were actually paying attention to him. Curious as to how it got out, he decided to fight down the cool nausea in the pit of his stomach and seek out Lisa; since she was the only other person involved, she was sure to know.  
  
He found her leaning against the wall next to the fire alarm, talking to a boy in her own grade. She looked tired, and like she’d been crying; he didn’t know why she always looked like she’d been crying, but it was a look to which he’d grown accustomed considering the depth of their conversations.  
  
She noticed him there when he’d opened his mouth to say “hi.” Billy couldn’t even get the word out, though – she’d looked at him like she’d seen a ghost, and then made her exit as quickly as possible.  
  
Billy squinted, confused. “Lisa, wait!”  
  
The hallway grew silent.  
  
The boy with whom Lisa had been conversing pushed away from the wall, a steely glare in his eyes, his hands balling into fists as he approached. “You stay away from her, you little perv.”  
  
And that’s all he remembered.  
  
  


***

  
  
  
Billy woke up with his head feeling like it was all squeezed together, and the sudden discovery that he couldn’t open his mouth. At first, he tried to strain his jaws, but he realised very quickly that said action was an immeasurably bad idea, as the most horrific pain shot through his mandible and down into his throat.  
  
When his vision corrected, the first person he saw was his mother, and he almost asked her what she was doing at his school in the middle of the day – until he realised again that he couldn’t open his mouth to speak.   
  
That’s when he found out that he was in a hospital bed.  
  
His eyelids snapped wide open, and he sat up quickly, his breath coming in short, ragged gasps, his voice making strange, panicked sounds through his wired jaws.   
  
“Billy, shh! Billy please, calm down, it’s okay! I’m here,” Sarah moved forward and cradled Billy’s head against her shoulder, rocking him as he finally woke up to the pain in his mouth and neck, stroking his hair. “You’re going to be okay. That little delinquent was suspended; I made  _sure_  of it – oh, Billy, don’t cry, you’ll strain your mouth.”  
  
Billy pulled away from his mother, looking around frantically for a tissue or paper towel to wipe off his face, which felt slimy and wet. His lips were chapped, and when he panicked, it tore open a little crack in his lip and caused it to bleed. He finally settled on using the hospital blanket, since his mother couldn’t understand him, because his teeth were wired shut. He wiped off his nose and mouth gingerly, and then settled back against the pillow with a shuddering sigh. He tried to take the situation in by minutes. More importantly, he tried to revisit how he got here; however, all he could remember was seeing Lisa walk away, and then some older kid punching him in the face. He didn’t remember the ride over, or whether or not there was an ambulance, or how they wired together his jaws.  
  
When a few minutes had passed, long enough for the panicked feeling to settle into a pool of defeat in his stomach, he looked up at his mother questioningly, then made a writing motion with his hand.  
  
Sarah frowned, perplexed; then, her face lit up with comprehension, and she pulled a tiny, flower-print notebook out of her purse and handed it to him along with a pen.  
  
 _Do you know what happened?_  Billy wrote.  
  
Sarah read it, then nodded solemnly.   
  
Billy took the pen back.  _Then why did that kid hit me?_   
  
Sarah peeked over, then gave a soft sigh, reaching her hand over to squeeze his. “Because he was putting his nose into business that wasn’t his. Billy,” she began, pinching the bridge of her nose, “I know it wasn’t your fault,  _trust_  me, I know it wasn’t. You’re growing up, and I should’ve been aware of any –  _changes_  – so I could talk to you about them before something like this happened –”  
  
 _Something like what?_  Billy wanted to yell, but instead it came out, “Shunk fuht!” which, while managing to convey the right level of confusion and irritation, wasn’t necessarily as dignified as he would’ve liked.  
  
“If a girl doesn’t want to be kissed,” Sarah said, “you can’t just kiss her anyway.” She ran her fingers through her hair, looking – for the most part – like she had no desire to instigate the conversation. “I’m sorry we never had a chance to t –” She was interrupted abruptly, the notepad yanked out of her hand by her son, who was now scribbling on it furiously. He held it up for her to see, and gave the words a _thwap_  with the pen for emphasis.  
  
 _SHE KISSED ME._  
  
Sarah made a little “o” with her mouth, which melted into a harsh frown. “Are you telling the truth?”  
  
Billy looked at her incredulously.  
  
Taking the notepad out of Billy’s hands, she calmly folded it back up and set it on the side table, laying the pen neatly on top of it. For a few moments, her expression was unreadable, caught between the reality of either one of two extremes, lines of pained contemplation wearing into her brow and the corners of her lips. She leaned over and ran a thumb across Billy’s cheek, which made him flinch. That hadn’t been the desired effect, so Sarah pulled her hand back, the look on her face unchanged. Billy wondered what she’d been told, and who’d told her, and why it appeared to be so difficult for her to believe him.  
  
At last, she gave a small nod. “I’m going to have to talk to your father.”  
  
Billy gave a muffled yelp.  
  
“No, sweetie, it’s nothing bad. I believe you. I’m just starting to think that maybe home-schooling might be a better option to consider for you.” Her frown grew deeper. “It doesn’t seem like your school is - ready to  _cope_  with someone as special as you are,” she added bitterly.  
  
Billy scrunched his brow, eyes still wide and searching. He wasn’t sure he liked the way his mom called him special, especially after what Lisa had said to him the previous day.  
  
 _They think you’re a freak, Billy._  
  
He looked at her pleadingly, and before he knew what was happening, he could feel him shake his head “no.” For an instant, he felt that intense desire to be normal, and to be accepted – not to be isolated. He wanted to make friends, even if it meant pretending to be dumber than he was –   
  
“I know it’s a big step, Billy, but one of your schoolmates  _broke your jaw_  today, and I can’t let that slide.” Her face was contorted into a look of anxiousness, and it made Billy uncomfortable. “Remember all those other times that you came home with black eyes or bloody noses, and I didn’t make you tell me what happened? That was a mistake. That was a terrible mistake on my part, and I’m very sorry.”  
  
Billy lolled his head away from her and closed his eyes. Now, he just wanted to go to sleep. When he was asleep, the world didn’t exist, and his mother wasn’t talking about bloody whatevers and home-schooling.  
  
“I’m going to make it up to you, Billy, okay? I’ll talk to your father, and we’ll order your books, and you can learn what you want, when you want to learn it. No one’s going to beat you up anymore, and there won’t be any young floozies around to toy with the emotions of innocent little boys.”  
  
Billy turned quickly toward his mother, and instantly regretted it. He wanted to tell her not to talk about Lisa like that; he wanted to say that she didn’t understand her at all. Instead, he let out a pitiful whimper from the pain that shot through his jaw, and lethargically rolled over onto his side.  
  
Sleep came blissfully fast, thanks to the antihistamine drip in his veins, and he had a series of wild dreams that he wouldn’t be able to remember in the morning. One of them was of Mister Horrible, even though that part was weird because he knew that Mister Horrible was him in the pretend world he’d made up.   
  
Mister Horrible was building a ray gun at the science fair, and it was going to win first prize.


End file.
